we'll provide the offense, you provide the defense. we talk to them about hardening their structures in a defensive measure against wild land fires. a lot of it is public education, survivability, building standards, but predominately our focus is putting the onus on the land owner, putting the onus on the private property owner, we will attempt to protect your home but the days of staying and defending your home and killing our fire fighters are done. we will not stand and defend a house that has not been prepared by a land owner and die for it. we don't do that any more. that's one of our doctrinal changes and we set forth some new guidelines with that. >> thank you. >> question, mr. secretary. >> in a large scale disaster relief, where the military is called in to assist the civilian components there is obvious issue of how you get

the command and control and in particular what telecommunications is used to support that command and control. your exercising together is very critical, i think, to working out command and control but you still have an equipment problem because the equipment, telecommunication equipment designed for the military was different from that used. how are you working out to get the coordination of telecommunications, particularly in disaster relief where the cellular infrastructure may be broken down and not available to support? could you comment somehow are you going to work out this telecommunications problem. >> so from a perspective of fema, we not only have a defense officer appointed by dod embedded with us during a disaster but we actually practice and have communications interoperatability over our systems to be sure we can communicate with each other on similar platforms and also

support state and local platforms, whether it was katrina or other events we've actually been able to bring in national guard platforms to provide 911 systems for cities that have lost those systems. we recently in the joplin tornados and also tuscaloosa tornados we brought in dod equipment to replace what was destroyed. from the fire side i know there's a lot of things you are doing to work around the interoperatability issues with regard to communications between fire and dod and maybe if ray or anybody else wants to speak to that. >> our communications challenges still exist. we have excellent telecom communications, we have a layered effect of our radio systems. we have mobile command posts that we can exercise. so we're prepared for power outages, reduction of

telecoms, we have a layered effect for our communications. but as everybody here said, we need help. if somebody here can help me get a navy or marine corps aircraft to talk to my guys on the ground tactically, i need that and i don't have that today. i use a command control helicopter, a civilian helicopter, to handle that and transfer that to an air to air victor frequency. but from a command control perspective, we're fairly robust. are we perfect, no, but we do have layered defenses against that. >> miss yeager, i don't know if you want to say anything from a national guard perspective. >> we have some mobile explorable platforms we can send out to incidents to help provide additional infrastructure in the event everything breaks down then our units have organic

communications capability so i can move that out and i can help reinforce cal fire on their incident with what i have in the aviation brigade and units through the state of california have that same communication but the iceu, which is a mobile communications platform, is ideal in events like this to push out to help. >> any other questions? >> i have one. back in 1992 when it was a big fire season and there was a lot of grass, they came to us and i was down at camp pendleton and they asked us it train marines on shovel work. what happened about 6 months later, they ended up sending two battalions to yellowstone. i haven't heard any discussion at all, do you expect the military, the guard or the active forces to be training people to do shovel-like work? all you have talked about so far is aviation. >> one of the challenges with

a ground-based attack and training a soldier to be a ground-based fire fighter is the training takes time. and it takes approximately 3 to 5 days of solid training to make sure that they are going to be working in a safe environment to learn what's going on. and most of the time that, the incidents in california will become mitigated. now, not to say that we certainly have that as an option. we have a fairly robust what we call fire crew program using cdcr inmate fire fighters. it is on our radar and it's something that we have as a contingency if we needed to do it. >> lieutenant colonel. >> yes, general, in the mou it does address the ground portion

but the focus of effort is mainly on the aviation side but it is built in there for the ground side if necessary. >> i just want to say in 2008 we did activate hand crews to fight fires and we've identified soldiers throughout the state to respond if needed. they've got the tools that they need, the boots and all that cached and available. it's really just a matter of getting the call and being ready to go. >> i was going to end with general myat. i know we've trained soldiers to do that kind of thing. after the colorado fires just recently they did put a lot of soldiers that trained, so we do still have that program who can do that if the need warrants. any other questions from out there before i turn it over to general myat? let me thank our panel here. >> thank you.

(applause). as we leave here today, we need to keep the ball moving forward. we can't -- i think most of us all here would agree, we really can't prevent the next disaster from happening. but by building the partnerships that we are here today and will continue to build in the future, we can certainly limit the number of deaths and long-term destruction. we can surge a lot of things: resources, people. but we cannot surge trust. so venues such as this is what helps us build that trust so that when

the bell does go off we know -- a comment i made yesterday and i'd like to use it again in closing today, the most important thing for me to come out of this two-day seminar and sbat -- into the future is the ability for us to physically face to face look each other in the eye, shake hands and say to each other, we are in this together. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. . (applause). >> thank you, admiral beeman. you have helped me carry out one of the instructions secretary schultz gave to me 3 years ago, bring the fleet back to fleet week. we couldn't do it without you.

i thank secretary and mrs. perry for coming, just -- i know it's, you've got some other things, people are waiting on you right now but i really appreciate you coming here. of course secretary and mrs. schultz for the entire program. vice admiral nathan, i don't know if he's here, he may have gone already, but he gave a great talk yesterday on the medical side. and vice admiral z, coast guard, our senior rep here, i can never pronounce his name but he's made things great. general speese, thank you for making this happen. rear admiral hubner, he was here, he's been terrific working with us. rear admiral rivera coming up from the chilean navy, thank you so much. i learned a lot. we

need the kind of input that we got from you, really, and we thank you so much. i would be remiss not to mention the two people that really are responsible for all this. first was lewis loeven. lewis loeven works hours and hours to do this. thank you so much. but the other is because she's committed to make it happen and it's her focus that always to learn from everything that happens, ann koninberg at dem, thank you so much, ann, for everything you do. you had to have a pass to get on the ship. i've asked captain pringle, to get off the ship, i wonder if you can secure the hatch until they fill out their participant form. if you could do that, i

would appreciate that. fleet week, we are a neutral convener of the process to improve the relation ships between this global force for good and the local civilian officials. and one of our goals is next time you put up your slide with all those logos on it, general, you are going to have the san francisco fleet week logo on it, too. i look at what we accomplished in 2010, we had a meeting to understand dsca, in 2011 we had the table top exercise, we debriefed that, we had a great speaker then we had an education seminar. this time, this year we had a functional exercise in august which was terrific, you saw the panel, a medical exercise as part of fleet week and you saw the enthusiasm of the participants, then we had the back brief. now we've had a strategic operational and tactical

discussions about going forward and the things that we can accomplish. so what are you going to do in 2013? well, fill out the form and tell us what you think we ought to do but we're going to be working hard to move this forward. i think ray cheney said it from cal fire best today: we are all better off because we're in here for the last day and a half and i'm sitting here wondering, all my contemporaries, what have they been doing for the last 36 hours? they haven't been doing anything near as important as what we've been doing. i thank all of you so much for participating and stay in touch. if we've got your email address you will never be lonely because we're going to get you back here next year. thank you all so much. (applause).

he heads the baur row of medicine for the navy. i lacked at his bay oh in the program, educated in georgia and he's had a great career in the navy commanding several hospitals, winning several awards and his most recent command was as the commander of walter reed, and i was so glad that he was here to hear the panel that we had with our medical peer to peer exercise.

and he's going to talk to us now about navy medicine. with that, please help me welcome vice admiral matthew nathan. (applause). >> thank you, general, very much. well, it's a pleasure here and i'm honored to be able to speak in front of such a distinguished audience. secretary schultz, mrs. schultz, pleasure it see you and you lend tremendous gaffe tas to this program. general spees, distinguished flag officers, general officers and mostly everybody here who is in the readiness business, i am honored to be speaking to a group of people and that would include i think everybody in this hanger deck who is part of that cadre of individuals who when bad things happen and everybody runs out, your job is

to run in. it doesn't get better than this coming out here. the a's are in, the giants are in. back in dc's the national's had the best -- who would have thunk it. and being on this ship, skipper pringle, congratulations on a great ship and a superb crew. as you get higher up in the navy you get less and less opportunity to be on a ship as i head back to the bureaucracy, my only request to you is for god's sake take me with you. i'll work in the engine room, i'll chip paint, i'll do anything to be hayes-white gray and underway.

i'm responsible to them primarily for our wartime mission. my job is the readiness mission, as is yours. i have to be ready for the next big thing whatever it is. it may be somebody that's blown up, it may be a unit taking fire, it may be a mass casualty, it may be mass relief or to those of our neighbors and allies, it may be somebody getting ready to deliver a baby. imagine we are sitting in this venue oopbd all of a sudden your pager goes off, your associate comes up and taps you on the shoulder and says, you need to see this. there has been a bomb that's gone off in

our nation's capital or los angeles, a nuclear device. there has been an earthquake. there has been a hurricane where we thought the good news was the winds blew and it did some damage but all is well, oh, my god, the levies just broke. oh, by the way, there's an earthquake or a tsunami or a nuclear critical accident that's occurred somewhere overseas. how will we respond to that? and then let's bring it closer to home, how did we marry up the capabilities that exist because there is no greater tragedy than to have robust capabilities, mellow medical, logistical or otherwise. you are better prepared with every one of these meetings, you are better prepared with every networking that happens in the hallways and exchanging business cards

but you will never be absolutely prepared. what we're doing here today and in future events is a journey, it is not a destination. we will never be able it high five ourselves and say we have everything figured out and we'll be able to solve it the minute it happens. ask anyone who has been in the throes of a complex medical emergency. i congratulate you on leaning forward and recognizing the next nightmare scenario may be around the corner and our job, the american people have come to rely on us to be able to stand between them and trouble, to be able to jump out in front of them and say, get behind me, i will lead you through this, i will get us out of this. i will build the relationship, i will build the networks, i will build the competence and professionalism that will change lives and save lives and make a difference. i will learn from the lessons of the past as difficult and as gruesome as some of them are. i will learn from the lessons that have occurred on our

shores and on other shores. as i said, i'm in the readiness business. here's some of the capability we bring to the plate. if i were to tell you that if you were walking out somewhere and you were to step on a bomb, an improvised explosive device, and its detonation capacity was such it would take off all four of your limbs and cave in your skull, what are the opportunities you would survive that? today that happens. my prior job, as was mentioned, is to be the commander of the national naval medical center and oversee the integration of that with walter reed army medical center to what's now known as the walter reed national medical center at bethesda. pretty challenging the cultures that exist there, you have cultures that exist here, you are speaking about cultural

differences between the military and its hierarchy of command and control and the civilian command and control and figuring out the two greatest things you need in the chaos of disaster. no. 1, communications. no. 2, who's in charge. i dealt with a lot of cultural issues when i was combining the army and the navy medical forces between walter reed and bethesda. america's army is an amazingly heroic army. they have occupied valley forge , tokyo, berlin, danang and now it occupies bethesda, maryland, but we're working through that. how do we break those cultural barriers, how do we figure out supporting supporters, how do we do that before the next capacity goes on? so what have we done, what capabilities do we bring, where do we use them and how will

they be playing a role here in the event of the most likely nightmare scenarios for this area? i grew up in the bay area, i have tremendous affection for it. i did train on the east coast but i grew up in santa clara and in napa, i used to come down and watch candlestick park, my dad would bring me down, i would watch the 49ers play and i have great pride in the amount of collaboration and cooperation you are showing to figure out what the next nightmare scenario might be and be ready for it. it's probably going to be either an earthquake, it may be a man-made catastrophe such as an heinous terrorist act that could range anywhere from a mass casualty with chem-bio, be it small pox, be it chemical gasses, be it tactical nuclear

effect, to a pandemic. avian influenza. how prepared will we be? let's get back to that marine or sailor that's blown up? in previous conflicts from the time you were grievously injured to the time you were eventually immediate vaked back to the states to a tertiary care facility such as a tertiary care medical facility such as walter re d or bethesda or san diego or brooke army in texas or a va medical center, that time of injury to time of immediate vak was 45 to 60 days. ladies and gentlemen, today if you are a warrior and you are blown up or griefously injured,

on average from the time you are grievously injured to the time you arrive in my icu in bethesda is 3 days. that capability is provided to us by on screen care with unparalleled first responder action that can save the live, tourniquet therapy, clotting agents, understanding, robust immediatevac capibility, and then a continuing continuum to germany and back to the states in the c130's, the flying icu's which the air force has, which you are safer in the air at 30,000 feet than you are in 90 percent of the icu's in this country. they do not lose patients over the atlantic. they do not lose patients over the pacific and, remember, they

transport them within days, days, of them being critically injured. the patient will wake up for the first time in a hospital in the states. that is often the first time they wake up. that's how fast the medevac system goes. wouldn't it be a shame to waste that compartment of skills on a mass casualty event that occurs here. well, we have hospitals and they're going to be okay and we have a robust provider system, and you do, one that the cities and counties and states should be proud of. because they get it. they get it out here. but the hospitals, they will have to figure it out. but what if you are a country and all of a sudden you have an earthquake and by the way the one thing you need most because of that earthquake, the hospital infrastructure, is gone. can we describe a scenario that could be like that? i remember when i was in

college a popular thing was the national lampoon and they did a parody of the political science final. please write a scenario where world events and powers provide and results in total thermonuclear warfare results and the next question was, please create a lab practical to test your theory. is there a lab practical to test this theory? haiti. as you know, a few years ago the haitian people suffered an earthquake and the initial problem was crush injuries. yes, infection and dysentery and water supply and all those things would follow fairly soon, but the initial catastrophe was crush injuries, trauma, and the hospitals were gone.

so what did we do? the world responded as best it could. what we did, the naval maritime forces, we sent our balts group down there which was patroling the area, we sent the hospital ship comfort down. so you have the comfort on the east coast, you have the mercy on the west coast. the mercy is parked down in san diego. it just got back from its asian humanitarian assistance from guam, indonesia, vietnam, an amazing number of nations we're partnering with. those hospital ships with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, they produce their own medical oxygen, they have ct scanners and they can do almost anything a hospital on the west coast

can do and we can park them offshore as we did in haiti and in haiti they spent the first 72 hours once they got on scene doing nothing but repairing crush injuries and restoring life. that's the capacity we have. i like to think in our partnership with the maritime services and the coast guard and our reserve forces, i like to think of us as america's or the world's 911 when something bad, either man-made or natural happens, some catastrophe happens in the world, often times the ambassador will pick up the phone and dial 911 and the navy marine corps team answers the phone. it is our those, it is our dna it is our ability to be there. if you look at the communicate dapbt's 3 central tenets of what he believes it importance,

readiness is in there. the ability to move and go now. where do you want us, when do you want us, like fedex, we are absolutely guaranteed to be there overnight. it's what we do. it's what we are trained for. and the more we understand and can operate with civic forces, the more we understand what already exists in our life line, the more we can break down political barriers and culture barriers that exist within our own country, the more we can partner and stabilize and support civic operations, because as someone said earlier in the panel, if we need to come in, things are pretty bad. but here's the good news. we bring a tremendous arsenal of capability and talent and technology and command and control and mostly we bring a how can i help you, how can i work to support your mission, how can i make a difference? is your hospital structure so overloaded and so